Hi JB

Sounds like your moving ahead, its a constant battle I do belive they want whats best. The writing issue has some merit, if you look at how they do things in a lock step school program. By thrid grade certian basic skill sets must be in place. They have trouble seeing that all children may not fit well withing that picture. It is also true that a student that has dificulties writting may have dificulties in future subjects because this skill may hold them back. I use my own personal story, that I write extreamly poorly and find it to be a great chore. Had I developed a better writing skill set, I would have had things much easier in the upper grades. Our DS6 writes better then I ever did, and is learning to use that skill better. He also has a very good phonic teacher, even though it seemed very easy and below his ability compared to his reading level, he now has much better spelling and can work out words better then before. I was a sight reader, never learned any phonics and spell terrible. Also his math teacher is pushing timed times tabeles. DS6 understands the concepts and can Multiply and Divide, but not quickly. I see that knowing this quickly will help him with Divison, fractions, etc... Same with some numeber sense, he had some dificulty with numbers in his head like 328-192. You can do this quickly if you understand the number 328-200+8. Easy in your head, DS6 took some time to learn it this way as opposed to writing it down.
I am not siding with them, just pointing out that their not completly crazy. I still belive that most teachers do not know how to teach Gifted much less HG. They are stuck in their modalities that they have learned work for 95% of thier students, and when you have a 99.9, thier thinking does not match well. They also have to deal with (Espesially in K-2) that all parents kids are gifted, and the what are you going to do about it attitude. It can be hard to see correctly through all the other noise.
Keep up the great work, it is sad that all kids don't have parents that advocate for them as well as you and your wife do for your son.

Last edited by Edwin; 02/12/09 05:53 PM.